One of the fun things about being a guide in a small community is that folks know what you do and report interesting things that they have seen. I was at the bank one day making a deposit when the teller told a story about a giant bubble of foam in the Saint George River behind her house early this spring. She lives near the bottom of a long stretch of rapids and near a big eddy (a section of water that is actually moving upstream) in the river.
Over the years I have explained to a number of clients about our water being stained with tannin that makes the water dark in color, in fact some streams look like root beer or very dark tea. The tannin is leached out of the leaves on the forest floor and is especially strong in the early spring. Another interesting property of tannin is that it makes sudsy looking foam where the water mixes with air in places like rapids or where waves crash in on the shore. Over the years many clients have asked if the water is polluted because the foam looks so much like soap bubbles.
Yesterday she asked if I would like to see a picture of the foam bubble we had discussed earlier this spring (screen saver on her computer) the picture is so amazing that I asked if she would send it to me so that I could put it in 
this blog post. As you can see the foam pile is an amazing size (estimated in the e-mail to be 3 feet high and 3 feet across) and it dissolved in the sun during the day. I am guessing that the cold overnight temperatures kept the bubbles from breaking (possibly frozen) and as it warmed up the foam slowly dissolved.
Needless to say a pretty interesting natural phenomena, thank you Denise and Andrew for sharing something truly amazing in the Maine Outdoors (and your back yard)!
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